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Saturday, September 10, 2011

Quick Hitters from Friday

Here are some quick thoughts, observations, and random one-liners from our experience yesterday:

Brandon Phillips is a really cool dude. There was no pressure and it's incredibly easy to have a conversation with him. If there's a better overall guy in the game today, we'd like to meet him.

Dontrelle Willis is a big guy. He's even larger in life than he looks on T.V.

Yonder Alonso is a class act. He ASKED US if we wanted a picture.

Mike Leake can really rock the knee-high socks.

Rick Stowe, the clubhouse manager, was extremely nice, striking a long conversation with us and giving us new Reds hats. I was surprised they had hats big enough for Will's head!

You can really tell that Johnny Cueto is dedicated and wants to be on top of the ERA leaderboard. He was running the stadium stairs fours hours before game time. He was the only one out besides the ground grew! Oh, and he was also rocking a super-sweet looking t-shirt.

We were able to talk to Chris Welch, Jamie Ramsey, Jeff Brantley, Marty Brennaman and Denver Post writer Troy Renck, among others before the game on Friday.

The atmosphere of Coors Field and the surrounding area is different. There are tons of vendors selling water, drinks, popcorn and everything else directly outside the stadium with no interference from the city or ballpark whatsoever. Also, it seems the fans here are more interested in the stadium atmosphere rather than the game on the field itself.

The 40,000 fans seemed more interested in the atmosphere of a game. I guess the team is to new for there to be a hard core fan base. Everyone was calm and relatively laid back.

The two largest cheers of the night came during the t-shirt giveaway in the middle of the sixth inning and when the home crowd belted a rowdy rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch.

The lack of humidity here is ridiculous. You can't drink enough water to keep yourself from feeling thirsty.

Perhaps the only complaint we have on the trip is that our hotel doesn't have free Wi-Fi! We're currently mooching off of Starbuck's free Wi-Fi as we speak.